“Hello stranger.” My tone was icy.
“Carm, thank god you’re okay. I just got back from a mission and I heard about the lab. I heard what happened. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
As much as I’d like to be magnanimous about his absence, I couldn’t. I was pissed. We were buddies, or at least we had been before his transfer. “Where were you? I called you like, loads and your phone went to voicemail.”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.”
Yeah, well my friendship was classified. Gah! Damn the IEPEU. How could I blame him for doing his job? “I’m fine. But I have to go.”
“You’re mad. I get it.”
My eyes pricked. Fuck being mad. “I miss you.”
“Oh, babe, I miss you too. Look. I have a few days off, and I’m gonna swing by and see you, ‘kay? We can do our movie night, grab Malina and Garuda and …”
“They’re in Nagalok.”
“What? Since when?”
“About a month now. You know how time runs differently between our worlds.”
“Don’t I just. Wait, you were alone when this happened?”
My throat began to close up. Do not feel sorry for yourself, dammit. “Not exactly, but I’ll explain when you come see me.”
“I’ll be there midweek, love you babe.”
“Love you too.”
The aerial tram station loomed up ahead, across the main road. I made to step out just as a limo slid to a halt right in front of me.
The back passenger door opened and Vritra leaned out. “Get in.”
His ember eyes were blazing with suppressed fury.
Oh dear.
4
Vritra glared at me from the seat opposite me. “Good to see you alive and well, Miss Hunter.”
Why had I got into the car again? “Look. You have to stop doing this—calling, checking up on me. I’m not your responsibility, okay?”
He let out a bark of laughter. “If only that were true.”
What the heck was that supposed to mean? “I have a case, and I need to be somewhere, so if we’re done here …” I reached for the door handle, and he leaned forward into my space, pushing me back into my seat with that darn power of his. The kernel inside me unfurled, ruffled and annoyed, and power swelled inside me, shooting out to smack his aura upside the head. Back the fuck off.
He sat back, his mouth parted, and then he smiled—a beauteous glorious thing. It transformed his harsh forbidding face into something entirely … wow. And were those angels singing?
“Where do you need to be, Miss Hunter?”
“Brahma Corp.”
The smile evaporated, and his expression sobered.
Aw, no fair.
He pressed the intercom button. “Brahma Corp please.”
The limo peeled away from the curb.
“So, tell me what happened,” he said. “The news was sketchy at best.”
“Well, these guys wreathed in shadows broke into the clearing and killed everyone. They had these silver weapons that glowed when they made contact with the yaksha. Swords and whips and daggers.”
Vritra’s eyes narrowed. “And you don’t know who they are.”
“Nope.”
His eyes lips thinned. “So you go running to Brahma Corp to speak to a god.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. Why? Wait. Do you know what they are?”
He folded his arms across his chest, his expression shuttered.
Seriously? He was going to hold out on me because I hadn’t thought to come to him first? “Oh, come on. I don’t even know you, not like I know Indra and Varuna. Besides, they’re gods and you’re a demigod.”
“A demigod who saved your pretty little arse at the Mayfair quarterly ball. A demigod who actually gives a damn whether you live or die. Tell me, did Indra or Varuna contact you after you almost died to see how you were coping? Tell me, exactly how many times have they been in touch since you and your little gang saved the fucking world?” He was spitting mad, like proper vibrating with it. His nostrils flared. “Answer me.”
I sat up straighter, fuck if he was going to see me cower. “No. And zero. But they’re gods so they’re probably really busy.” Yeah, that was lame, even to my ears.
He snorted. “Yeah, they’re gods, and they concern themselves only with things that benefit them—your friend Malina for example. Now, she was important to them. You, on the other hand, were merely covered by proxy.”
And now they didn’t need us anymore. Had I been naive in thinking they’d help me now? Just drop whatever they were doing and say, hey, yeah, come on up for a chin-wag? Fucking hell. The fire went out of my argument, and the tension drained from my limbs.
I met his gaze. “Can you help me?”
He exhaled, the anger leaving his face. “Dammit, Carmella,” he said softly. “It’s all I’ve been trying to do since we met.”
If sincerity were an odor he’d be reeking of it. Why was I running? What was I afraid of? Oh yeah, the fact that he was one of the suspects in the Ghandarva case. One of the three men who’d known I’d had the dead Ghandarva’s feather. I shouldn’t trust him, except right now my gut told me that he was telling the truth.
“Tell me what they are?”
“On one condition,” he said.
“What?”
“You agree to come and train with me. Just once or twice a week. Train with me and learn to master your power.”
Spend more time in his company, with his aura intruding on mine. The thought sucked the air from my lungs. “Why does it matter to you so much?”
“Because, you’re asura, and the asuras’ are my responsibility. Because I prefer live Carmella to dead Carmella.”
My lips twitched. Couldn’t argue with that. “Fine. It’s a deal. Now tell me what we’re dealing with.”
He locked gazes with me. “The silver weapons that glow when making contact are only ever carried by one entity—the amduth. The reaper.”
“A reaper? Yes. Malina told me about those, but they work for Yama, the lord of the Underworld, right? I’m so confused.”
“They did. But after the gods closed the gates of hell for the first time, several broke free and went rogue. The ‘Thirteen Yamduth of War’ they were called. The only reapers to carry weapons. I’ve heard rumors of them taking on bounty hunting jobs, but from what I heard they were working solo. The Thirteen working together again? Well, that only ever happened in the great wars when there were too many souls to reap.”
Supernatural bounty hunters. That made sense. It fit perfectly with Honey’s theory. But would a yaksha beta even know how to contact these Yamduth?
“I don’t understand how someone would go about recruiting these creatures.”
Vritra shrugged. “I’d have to look into it and get back to you. But one thing I can tell you for sure—their weapons are special. They only glow when extracting a soul. The bounty hunter jobs I heard about were straight kills. The souls were left for Yama’s reapers. So the question is—what do the Yamduth want with all the yaksha souls?”
5
Vritra dropped me outside Brahma Corp where Honey was waiting. She was leaning against her bright yellow mini. Charlie, she called it. The thing was an antique, but a damn well maintained one. Honey had a way with engines, and this one loved to purr.
“Was that who I think it was?” she asked.
“Yeah. And he was very informative. Come on, let me buy you lunch and I’ll fill you in.”
“I thought we were going into Brahma Corp.” She eyed the building.
“No need now.”
“Damn, I’ve always wanted to see the inside. Speak to a god.”
Except now I wasn’t so sure that the gods would be bothered to speak to us. Vritra’s words, although harsh, had struck a chord. The gods must have known about the lab incident, it was all over the news, and the massacre was huge news, and yet neither Indra nor Varuna had bothered to reach out to see if I needed anything. Vritra was righ
t. I’d been covered by proxy. Would they be as accommodating for Malina now that she was no longer the gatekeeper of hell? It didn’t matter. We had the information we needed.
“Maybe some other time.” I linked arms with her and steered her away from the building.
We found a small pub that also served food, and settled in with cold glasses of lemonade.
“So, what did you find out?” Honey asked.
I told her, and then sat back and sipped my drink, mouth dry from talking so much.
“Fucking hell,” Honey slumped back in her seat. “What now?”
“We need to find out how someone might summon a yamduth. How do you put out a bounty for the reapers to collect?”
Honey glanced at her watch. “I have the beta meeting in a couple of hours. Well, I should call it the new alpha meeting. They’ve picked neutral territory thank goodness. Hired out the Stag and Boar in Finchley for the evening. I’ll scope them out. Father took me along to enough meetings in the guise of caterer for me to know how it works. I just … damn, I’m fucking nervous.”
“Because you’re a woman?”
She snorted. “Yaksha mostly treat their women like commodities. Renegade was different. Is different. You don’t get females with the alpha gene, not because they don’t exist, but because it gets beaten out of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. Potential alpha females are broken, beaten, and in some extreme cases raped until they’re nothing but frightened wrecks. Father did the opposite with me. He declared me his heir and trained me the best he could. Kieran was beta, but we all knew that my alpha gene was stronger than my brother’s.”
“So how come you weren’t beta?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want it. To be honest I don’t want to be the alpha either. Kieran and I discussed it. He was meant to take over, not me. Now I have no choice. There isn’t another yaksha in the pack with an alpha gene dominant enough to take the reins. The other packs aren’t going to take this laying down. Trust me, there’s gonna be a lot of testosterone at the meeting.”
“In that case, how about I come with you? Add some extra estrogen to the mix.”
She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. Things could get violent.”
“All the more reason to have more back up, right?”
She dropped her gaze.
“Wait, were you going to go alone?”
She shrugged. “The pack is frightened. The strongest members were killed at the gathering. The rest simply want to mourn and get on with it. I couldn’t drag someone with me. This is my duty—to protect them. To prevent our pack being swallowed up by another.”
“So I’m coming with you. No arguments. Look, its part of the case. Until we say otherwise, every beta is a suspect. I’ll come with you in an official capacity. I need to interview the betas, sorry, new alphas, anyway. Check their whereabouts and movements over the last few weeks.”
“Yeah, that’ll go down well,” she drawled sarcastically.
I shrugged. “It will when I tell them they can either answer my questions in the comfort of the pub on neutral territory, or get hauled into the IEPEU and get quizzed in an interrogation room.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “There is one more thing.”
“Go on.”
“No one really knows about my ability to go full beast. I’ve never done it in public before. The other night, I just lost it. So …”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you. It’s just, Dad always warned me to keep it under wraps. Yaksha have issues with females having too much power as it is.”
The food arrived and we dug in.
Half an hour later, food all gone, we made our way back onto the street.
Honey led the way to her mini. “Come on, I’ll drop you back at the office so you can fill Murdoch in on what you found out.”
“Shit, Yeah. Thanks.”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour for the meeting. You sure you want to come?”
“Definitely.”
_____
Murdoch was at his desk flipping through a case file, a cold cup of coffee—complete with manky skin—at his elbow.
“What did you find out?” he asked, without looking up.
“Yamduth.”
“Reapers? Really? No one’s ever seen one … well, not seen one and lived to tell the tale.”
Was he making a joke? “Yeah, anyway. I’m going to interview all the new alphas later. Find out where they were the night of the massacre, what their movements have been over the last few weeks.”
He sat back, his brows low. “And why would you do that?”
“Because they’re suspects?”
“Well, that’s news to me.” He crossed his arms.
Shit, hadn’t I told him Honey’s theory? Crap, no I hadn’t. So I filled him in, about Honey’s conviction and the new alpha meeting, and the frown thawed.
“Yes, it fits. But an interrogation of that magnitude needs to be done in-house. We need to draw up warrants to bring them in for questioning. They won’t come willingly.”
“Which is why I’m offering them the opportunity to be questioned informally, on their territory. Familiar surroundings will help them relax and hopefully slip up.”
His lips turned down reflectively. “Okay. But you’re not going alone.”
“No. I’ll have the new Renegade Alpha with me.”
His brows shot up. “He stepped up quickly.”
“She had no choice.”
He stared at me for a long beat, then nodded. “Take your radio and call for back up if you need. I’ll alert dispatch to let them know the situation. Where’s the meeting?”
“The Stag and Boar in Finchley.”
He made a note. “Be careful, Hunter. Yaksha may look human, but underneath that facade lays a primal beast.”
A shiver skittered up my spine. Maybe walking into a room of alphas was a bad idea, but no way was I letting Honey do this alone.
_____
The yellow mini was parked in the carpark outside the IEPEU. Honey was visible behind the wheel, and there was someone beside her … Victor?
Honey rolled down her window and stuck her head out. “Hunter, over here.”
Like I could miss that bright yellow vehicle.
“Carmella,” Victor caught my eye in the rear-view mirror as I climbed in.
“You coming with?”
Victor nodded.
Honey started the engine and backed out of the parking spot. “I popped into the soup kitchen to make my food delivery early and got chatting to Victor. He offered to come with. Well, insisted more like.” She shot him a quick glance, but his eyes were on the road, his expression solemn.
Man, how the hell had he managed to fold his huge body into the mini? His knees were crushed up against the dash, head pressed against the roof. He looked like even more of a giant in such a confined space.
“The boys are watching the kitchen tonight,” Victor said. “I told Honey she needn’t have brought the food. After what happened we wouldn’t expect it.”
“No,” Honey said, steering us into traffic toward the North Circular. “Dad wanted to do this. He’d want me to continue to help. I’ve sorted out the staffing at the restaurant dad was running. It’s fine. I’ll manage.”
“You think the new alphas will have an issue with Victor coming along?”
“Fuck ‘em,” Victor said.
I balked. Wow, that was the first time I’d heard him curse.
Honey’s lips twitched. “Yeah, fuck ‘em.”
These two, man, there was definitely something going on—some kind of connection.
“One thing though,” Honey warned. “Let me do the talking. While you’re in there you’re part of my pack, ‘kay?”
Part of her pack. “Sure, I can do that. As long as I don’t need to bow or scrape.”
She chuckled. “Nothing like that. It’s just a respect and hierar
chy thing. If an alpha can command respect from his pack, then he commands respect from his fellow alphas. Once the meeting is done, I’ll hand over the floor to you for the interviews.”
We settled into silence, the traffic out the windows speeding by now we were on the main route that wound through the city. My phone buzzed and Banner’s name flashed on screen.
“Hey.”
“You could have been killed.”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah, I know.”
He sighed. “I’m just glad you’re all right. Can I … Can I see you?”
My heart ached. We’d only known each other a short time, but there was a connection. Not the kind he would like, but still. It was probably a bad idea to start spending time with him so soon. There was way too much longing in his voice, but I missed him. So …
“Yeah. I could do with some moral support tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
Oh, yeah. We hadn’t spoken properly since the night I’d told him we should spend some time apart. “I’m getting cut off from the skein.”
He was silent for a long beat. “I’m sorry Carmella. I know how much you wanted to be a part of the covens. There’s been some fear and fury over what happened. The smaller covens are the worst, eager to lynch. The Mayfair High Witch made the right call to protect us all.”
“I know.”
“What time is the ceremony?”
“Four.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“‘Kay.”
“See you tomorrow.” He hung up with a soft click.
The car swerved as we turned onto a narrow dirt track. Victor mumbled something and Honey snorted.
I peered out the windshield. “The pub is down here?”
“Yep.”
Surrounded by woodland in the middle of nowhere. Great. Why had I thought they’d be chilling in the center of town in a quaint British pub? Oh yeah, the name Stag and Boar. We drove into a clearing strewn with bracken and woodchips. A log cabin-turned-bar glared back at us. Yellow light streamed out from the windows to battle the settling gloom. It swept across the mini as we came to a halt parallel to the building. Honey killed the engine and we climbed out into the night. Several motorbikes and a couple of trucks were parked up closer to the cabin.
Defying Magick: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Witch Blood Chronicles Book 2) Page 3